EPSRC Reference: |
EP/M000397/1 |
Title: |
Seabed ploughing: modelling for infrastructure installation |
Principal Investigator: |
Augarde, Professor C |
Other Investigators: |
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Researcher Co-Investigators: |
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Project Partners: |
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Department: |
Engineering |
Organisation: |
Durham, University of |
Scheme: |
Standard Research |
Starts: |
30 November 2014 |
Ends: |
31 March 2018 |
Value (£): |
290,009
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EPSRC Research Topic Classifications: |
Civil Engineering Materials |
Ground Engineering |
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EPSRC Industrial Sector Classifications: |
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Related Grants: |
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Panel History: |
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Summary on Grant Application Form |
Soil ploughing, an activity carried out by man for thousands of years for agriculture, is now used at a much larger scale on the seabed to connect offshore energy production and generation devices to the supply network. In the next 50 years many more of these offshore devices (wind, wave, current and oil & gas) will be installed, meaning that considerably more seabed ploughing will be undertaken. However, we do not possess the same level of understanding of the mechanical and hydraulic processes associated with soil ploughing as we have developed for other soil-structure interaction problems. This means that ploughing schemes and equipment have to be designed on the basis of semi-empirical and conservative approaches, leading to financial uncertainty. In this project, new computational methods will be applied to the simulation of seabed ploughing to provide better estimates of key parameters such as the towing force and speed of ploughing in a given seabed deposit along with insights into plough stability. Given the likely ploughing activity in the next 20-50 years in UK waters and elsewhere, we expect that this new predictive approach will result in major savings for industry.
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Key Findings |
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Potential use in non-academic contexts |
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Impacts |
Description |
This information can now be found on Gateway to Research (GtR) http://gtr.rcuk.ac.uk |
Summary |
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Date Materialised |
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Sectors submitted by the Researcher |
This information can now be found on Gateway to Research (GtR) http://gtr.rcuk.ac.uk
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Project URL: |
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Further Information: |
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Organisation Website: |
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